‘DropBox’ App

Dropbox (iPhone/iPad): This is one of the best apps I’ve been using for the past few years. I used to take a USB stick around with me, from office to home, to conferences, to presentations, and everywhere in between. Now I don’t need to.

“Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your iPhone and iPad and even the Dropbox website! With the Dropbox app, you can take everything that matters to you on the go.”

While installing the apps on laptops and desktops helped taking files between various locations, it’s the ability to access them through both iPhone and iPad apps that has made the difference – uploading pictures I take on the phone when I’m out and about, sharing files and presentations with other Dropbox (and non-Dropbox) users, while at conferences has been brilliant and hugely useful. All the files I need are securely (see below) stored and accessible.

You get an initial and free 2gb of online storage but you can increase this 250mb for each introduction you make (that is taken up). If you have an education email address this is 500mb each. I have been working and using the free version for a couple of years now and finally succumbed to paying the $99/£63 for the 50gb upgrade … 4gb just wasn’t enough in the end!

The options along the bottom of the screen (from the iPhone version of the app) allows you to favourite a location to make it easy to find at speed, to upload a file/photo from your device, and the settings list (log in/out if you have multiple accounts).

Dropbox is also an extremely useful tool for collaborating with colleagues. By ‘inviting’ them to share a file or folder (and register if they are not already Dropbox users) you will each have access to the same file so, if one person updates it, it is synch’d with the edition stored in your colleagues Dropbox area!

It is worth noting that not everyone is as enamoured with Dropbox – in 2011 Dropbox suffered a security breach (Znet & Ed Bott and TechCrunch have both written about it), so read the reviews carefully before deciding.